/oclg/ – Orthodox Christian Literature General

[Anonymous No.19498769]

Theotokos Edition

What Orthodox literature have you been reading lately? Planning on attending Divine Liturgy on Sunday?

Recommended Literature—
>The Orthodox Study Bible
>EOB (New Testament):
https://ia601509.us.archive.org/9/items/new-testament-the-eastern-greek-orthodox-bible/New%20Testament%20%28The%20Eastern%20Greek%20Orthodox%20Bible%29.pdf
>The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church by Vladimir Lossky
>Orthodox Worship: A Living Continuity With the Synagogue, the Temple and the Early Church by Benjamin D. Williams and Harold B. Anstall
>God’s Revelation to the Human Heart by Fr. Seraphim Rose
>The Soul After Death by Fr. Seraphim Rose
>The Orthodox Veneration of the Mother of God by St. John Maximovich
>The Orthodox Church by Kallistos Ware
>The Orthodox Way by Kallistos Ware

https://youtu.be/icjexnL6rI4
https://youtu.be/3VNdXMFleBM

[Anonymous No.19498806]

[Anonymous No.19498817]

"Orthodox"

[Anonymous No.19498820]

>>19498817
The one and only Church of the apostles.

[Anonymous No.19499081]

https://youtube.com/watch?v=gdHSWmfkdgg
https://youtube.com/watch?v=-UQaOwsPrJw

https://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/reading/
https://energeticprocession.wordpress.com/2020/01/03/on-books-and-the-spiritual-life/

[Anonymous No.19499319]

>>19498820
Where did the trend of lay people reading hardcore monastic literature come from?

[Anonymous No.19499325]

Dropping by to say I think internet converts are awkward

[Anonymous No.19499333]

>>19499319
/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19499349]

>>19499319
Jesus Christ

[Anonymous No.19499478]

>>19498820
>>19499319
I'm just reading the Cлyжeбник, the Russian Orthodox equivalent of the Book of Common Prayer. I honestly have no interest in all the intricate theology, I just want to go to church and be a decent Christian.

[Anonymous No.19499495]

>>19499319
It started with Reformed Protestantism. I say this as a """non-denominational""" who feels called to Orthodoxy. In the more serious American Christian circles, nearly everyone is a scholar to some degree, largely due to the importance of apologetics in Evangelical Christianity. Most Reformed, Baptist, or Evangelical Christian men that I know who actually take their faith seriously have something like Systematic Theology or the Exhaustive Concordance on their bookshelf. feels that they have to know exactly how it works, why we think it works that way, and by what Biblical or literary authority we make these assertions.
With the influx of converts into the Orthodox Church, I suspect that people like me are heavily researching Orthodox theology to demonstrate to ourselves and our Protestant family members why and how Orthodoxy is the true Church.

[Anonymous No.19499551]

>>19499495
Can you really convert modern nihilistic atheists through apologetics?

[Anonymous No.19499555]

>>19498769
i'm cooooollecting!

[Anonymous No.19499561]

>>19499551
>Can you really convert modern nihilistic atheists through apologetics?
I don't think so. That's part of why I'm leaving Protestantism; the apostles weren't purely logisticians, they were also mystics.

[Anonymous No.19499578]

>>19499555
I am not a Christian but this makes me feel bad for being so much online.

[Anonymous No.19499579]

>>19499478
Exactly the kind of mindset that allowed Satan to lure the late relatively early church into buying "ever virgin Mary" and lead that into praying to Ishtar instead of God.

[Anonymous No.19499584]

>>19499579
I still don’t understand how you can believe that you can accidentally worship a pagan god- are you JW?

[Anonymous No.19499589]

Brehs, it says here that Seraphim Rose was a homosexual and there is also a reference to his sudden death having something to do with his intestines. Is this nigga gay or what?

[Anonymous No.19499596]

There is a good post in Russian, I advise you to read it using Google Translate. It is about the systematic study of Orthodox theology.

https://ljsear.ch/savedcopy?post=441171175

[Anonymous No.19499597]

>>19499584
>I honestly have no interest in all the intricate theology
>I still don’t understand

[Anonymous No.19499599]

>>19499596
The most important part:

"What is a priority system? This is about the theologian's need to be able to distinguish between more important texts and less important ones. So, the sum of priorities seems to me in the following sequence (please pay attention to the fact that here we seem to go down the steps from top to bottom):

1) Holy Scripture,
2) rules of councils and acts of councils,
3) teachers of the Church, recognized by the Church as authoritative sources for understanding the teachings of Holy Scripture and councils (here we can talk about both the teachers listed in some of the conciliar acts and those who influenced council decisions and took an active part in them),
4) teachers of a later time, under whose influence the Local Councils acted,
5) other Fathers of the Church who did not influence councils, but lived in antiquity and were the source of Tradition (ascetic authors, preachers, etc.). The fifth point requires clarification. Why is antiquity indicated? Because the ancient saint, whose authority was expressed by later saints, is inevitably more reliable than more modern saints, whose teachings have not yet passed the test of time and therefore cannot be considered part of Tradition as such (this is why the Church Fathers almost never referred to their contemporaries and immediate predecessors as an authority).
6) worship (here is the same principle as in paragraph 5 - the older text is more authoritative).
7) Textbooks of theology used in the practice of one or another Local Church and recognized by authoritative leading theologians.

So, within this system of priorities, I would recommend reading the fathers in this order: the rules and acts of councils - the most important authors (Gregory the Theologian, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Athanasius the Great, Cyril of Alexandria, John Chrysostom, Maxim the Confessor, John Damascene, Theodore the Studite , Dionysius the Areopagite, Leo the Great, Augustine, etc.) - other authoritative authors of the early period of Christianity (Ignatius the God-bearer, Irenaeus of Lyons, men of the apostles, Justin, etc.) - authoritative authors of a later period (Gregory Palamas, Mark of Ephesus, Gennady Scholarius, Dositheus of Jerusalem, Nikodim Svyatorets, Athanasius of Paros, etc.) - minor authors (Theodorite, church historians, preachers, ascetic authors, apologists) - modern authoritative church theologians (Macarius, Sylvester, V. Lossky, G. Florovsky, Raner, Lonergan, John Zizioulas and others depending on preference)."

[Anonymous No.19499607]

>>19499589
1. Dubious story.
2. If a person experienced such an attraction, but left it in the past, repenting before God, then why should we judge him?

[Anonymous No.19499608]

>>19499579
Good morning Mr. Calvinist. I am almost growing affectionate to you!

[Anonymous No.19499627]

>>19499607
pfffffff nigga y'all is gay af
isn't he the priest whose intestines were found ruptured like he was being gang-banged by thorn-dicked demons every night? g.a.y.

[Anonymous No.19499652]

>>19499579
Exactly the kind of mindset that got you to endlessly crusade on the internet about theological technicalities that even an atheist could obsess about. It's like religion is an exercise in dialectcs to you instead of something about faith. I dunno anon, you're ragging on other people for praying and going to church while you can't even speak without being vicious to everyone and everything. Take the beam out of your eye.

[Anonymous No.19499720]

Shills are going hard this morning. Truly demonic attitudes drive their conduct

[Anonymous No.19499770]

>>19499478
That’s why I like reading the desert fathers. It’s good wisdom, some of which one can benefit from, but it’s not theological autism. Too much theology sort of saps the life out of one’s faith. Not that it’s not important

[Anonymous No.19499806]

[Anonymous No.19500104]

because the other christian threads are dead, i might as well ask here.
what do you guys think of The Alchemist?
I thought it was a pretty good book, but have read some opinions on it being new age drivel. In my opinion it is not, and they possibly skipped all the talk about God.

[Anonymous No.19500353]

>>19499652
>praying to beings other than God
>theological technicalities

[Anonymous No.19500437]

>>19500353
top kek
if thats a technicality the great schism is a minor disagreement

[Anonymous No.19500542]

>>19500104
new age perennial "we're all one bro so you're basically god bro and jesus isnt real lol" drivel

[Anonymous No.19500547]

>>19500542
oh, right. I kinda interpreted it all differently(apparently better than it is lmao)
along with that, how safely can i dive into Jung?
I see quite a few people saying he's really esoteric down the line of his works.

[Anonymous No.19500561]

>>19500547
Jung is interesting to read for comparative studies but he is dualistic in his metaphysics and heavily influenced by occultism and eastern religions. He is fundamentally incompatible with Orthodoxy.

[Anonymous No.19500580]

>>19500561
I'm a prot.
Could you explain further how much that influences his work? Is it something so hard it is not quite worth taking in? How much care should i take as to understand it all correctly and discard the more far fetched things?

[Anonymous No.19500610]

>>19500580
I mean he literally wrote a book on alchemy and studied gnosticism, hermeticism and other occult traditions. His archetypes are pulled from these among other things.
It's worth reading into if you want to know about psychoanalysis but it won't get you closer to Christ. There are much better protestant authors you could read.

[Anonymous No.19500695]

>>19500610
Oh it's just because i'm interested in psychology. apparently it's just a field of madmen.

[Anonymous No.19500942]

>>19499478
Actually I must correct myself, the right word would be мoлитвocлoв, translates as "prayer book". It has all the daily prayers and so on and it's more lay oriented. Cлyжeбник is a liturgical book that covers services, etc.
>>19499770
I have a study Bible and I like doing comparative reading, but the degree of bickering over theology for me is too much, especially since people who focus so much on this are so caught up in telling one another they'll go to Hell, they often forget about the personal aspect of being a Christian. Yeah, it saps the life out of one's faith. There are people who are way too obsessed with apologetics, to prove that one's church is the true and only and the other is wrong. Like this Calvinist here who is completely fueled by this and instead of Jesus he's got "Ishtar worshipers" living rent free in his head. I think theological discussion and apologetics should be a mere accessory to devotion, praying, going to liturgy, etc. and even then should be carried out in a peaceful manner, not with enmity like this. It's not like any of this will built toward anything.
I'm very tired, today was a hard day.

[Anonymous No.19500994]

>>19499319
Why would one not want to read the experiences and wisdom of those who have dedicated their entire life to prayer?